As described in Japanese Unexamined Publication JP 2001-13911 (A) (which corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 6,249,087 B2), during the address period of time, a PDP selectively produces vertical opposite discharge, as a trigger, between a plurality of addressing electrodes A's and a plurality of scanning electrodes Y's that cross each other at right angles, and then it produces surface discharge between the scanning electrodes Y's and sustaining electrodes X's through surface discharge, to thereby determine selected cells to produce discharge for displaying and unselected cells to produce no discharge. Thus, the addressing discharge during the address period is a series of discharging occurrences consisting of the vertical opposite discharging occurrences between the addressing electrodes A's and the scanning electrodes Y's, and surface discharging occurrences between the scanning electrodes Y's and the sustaining electrodes X's. This addressing discharge requires high accuracy. For example, when no addressing discharge occurs in a particular cell to be caused to emit light, this cell does not emit light undesirably. When addressing discharge occurs in another particular cell to be inhibited from emitting light, this cell emits light undesirably. For the addressing discharge, even when the discharge occurs between the addressing electrode A and the scanning electrode Y, the addressing discharge may result in a failure if no discharge occurs between the scanning electrode Y and the sustaining electrode X. Thus, the quality of display is degraded when the accuracy of addressing discharge is insufficient. Thus the addressing voltage is conventionally raised or the address pulse width is expanded in order to improve the accuracy of the addressing discharge.